The conventional large diameter milling cutters are heavy and it is very difficult to handle such type of heavy milling cutters at the customer shop floor. It is desired to have a new milling adaptation system so that cutter becomes light and easy to handle at customer shop floor.
The existing split design milling cutter comprise of a back plate, which is mounted onto the spindle and a cutter ring with inserts mounted, which will be secured to the back plate. The customer still finds it difficult to mount cutter ring onto the back plate because of close tolerance between the cutter ring and the back plate. Even a slight tilt in the axis due to weight of cutter ring will make the entry of cutter ring into the back plate difficult. This is because entire circumferential locating face of back plate comes in contact with the inner face of the cutter ring. Sometimes, the cutter ring gets stuck in misaligned position affecting cutter run out (both axial and radial).
Further, the existing split design milling cutter comprises two drive tenons which are required for torque transmission. Hence, the positioning of the cutter ring on to the back plate is still difficult. It involves lot of hardware like pins, springs and single central cap screw for clamping cutter ring to fixture. Operator is required to always align arrow marks of the back plate and the cutter ring for proper mounting.
In addition, the locating surface of the existing split design milling cutter is fully cylindrical. The minimum clearance between the locating surfaces of cutter ring and fixture is 15 microns and maximum clearance is 35 microns, making mounting difficult in case of a slight tilt of cutter ring while mounting.